What Is Aon?

Aon doesn't just insure companies - one of its divisions builds the personality tests and video-interview software that decides who gets a callback.

Aon Consulting, Inc. is part of Aon plc, a large global professional services firm best known for insurance brokerage and risk management. Aon Consulting is its "human capital" arm: it designs, markets, and administers online assessments that employers use to screen job applicants, across a wide range of industries. It's based at 200 E. Randolph St, Chicago, IL. (source: ACLU's FTC complaint)

The three tools named in the complaint

• ADEPT-15 - an algorithm-driven personality test. The complaint says it measures traits that are close proxies for certain disabilities - meaning autistic people, other neurodivergent people, and people with mental health conditions like depression or anxiety tend to score differently on it, for reasons related to their disability rather than their ability to do the job.
• vidAssess-AI - a video interviewing tool built on top of ADEPT-15. The complaint says it inherits ADEPT-15's disability-related risk and adds to it, because it uses AI to analyze video responses in ways that can pick up on race and other protected characteristics too.
• gridChallenge - a gamified test of cognitive skills like numerical and logical reasoning. The complaint says people who are Asian, Black, Hispanic or Latino, or of two or more ethnicities score lower on average than white test-takers, and that it may also unfairly screen out people with disabilities.

(source: ACLU's FTC complaint)

What Aon says about these tools

According to the complaint, Aon markets these assessments to employers as "bias-free," "fair," having "no adverse impact," and able to "increase diversity." It also reportedly tells people taking the tests that "there is no possibility of bias... either during the test or during the evaluation of answers." The ACLU's complaint argues these specific marketing claims are false and deceptive - which is the actual legal basis for the FTC complaint (deceptive marketing under the FTC Act), separate from the discrimination allegations themselves. See why it's significant for more on that distinction. (source: ACLU's FTC complaint)